Conservatives have already decided who killed Charlie Kirk
The identity and political affiliation of Kirk's assassin are still unknown. That won't stop the right wing from using his death as justification to punish their political enemies.
Charlie Kirk is dead.
As of 7 p.m. Eastern, we still have no idea who the killer is. We don’t know what motivated them, why there, why now.
It doesn’t matter though.
By the time they go to bed tonight, millions of Americans all across the country will be fully convinced of the political views of the killer.
The machinery of the right-wing media ecosphere was already doing its job within minutes of the announcement of Kirk’s death.
I tuned into Real America’s Voice — Charlie Kirk’s own online news channel — in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. The blame had begun right away, and predictably, it’s being pointed squarely at the left, with minimal evidence.
There was talk of how “hateful” MSNBC’s coverage was. How pundits have apparently suggested Kirk’s death was “deserved.”
It’s not difficult to find evidence of virtually all mainstream Democratic politicians and commentators condemning the shooting of Kirk.
“We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy,” former President Barack Obama tweeted. “Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.”
“I'm just incredibly sad for his family and his young kids, genuinely shaken about where this country is headed, and praying that we can find a way to walk ourselves back from the brink,” Jon Favreau, a former Obama staffer and current Pod Save America host, wrote.
Even Zohran Mamdani, the favorite to win the New York City mayoral race whose “Democratic socialist” self-description has made him a bogeyman for centrists and conservatives alike, tweeted: “I’m horrified by the shooting of Charlie Kirk at a college event in Utah. Political violence has no place in our country.”
Everyone in the left-wing mainstream is whole-throatedly condemning Kirk’s assassination. But that won’t stop — and isn’t stopping — the right wing from conjuring up a liberal enemy to be ruthlessly stomped out.
“The Democrat party is rotten from top to bottom,” Matt Boyle, the Washington Bureau Chief for Breitbart News (to the extent Breitbart can be referred to as news) told Bannon. “They have been corrupted by the radical left. They've been taken over. They've been subsumed. Maybe one day we’ll get to a place where we have two parties again that are reasonable, but we don't have a reasonable Democrat party anymore. Democrats are not reasonable. The fact is, is that they have created this culture.”
Another guest, former Navy SEAL and Warpath Coffee founder Tej Gill, just so happened to have an assault rifle displayed directly behind him when he told Bannon this: “You shouldn't have to look over your shoulder everywhere you go. This left-wing ideology is born from college professors. When young men, young women go to college they get radicalized by these college professors and it's getting to the point where it’s almost as dangerous as radical Islam.”
Gill went on to say: “They’re killing our children, Steve. These transvestite shooters are going into these, you know, this Catholic school last month, and whatever school, but it’s absolutely sickening. They’re attacking our children through their transvestites. They’re killing political figures that they don’t agree with. They’re desperate to hang onto power any way possible, even if it means killing people in the United States of America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, free speech country, they want to silence conservatives, they want to silence white people.”
It matters not that Democratic elected officials in Minnesota were themselves victims of political violence earlier this year. It matters not who Kirk’s killer might be. It matters not what their race, sexual orientation, or gender identity is. Conservatives have their enemy. And anyone who is not white, who is not heterosexual, or who is simply not a conservative, is that enemy.
In due time, President Donald Trump’s administration will use this killing to justify ever increasing attacks on the freedoms of the list of Americans the right wing doesn’t like. It’s a long list, and many of us are on it.